


The Word Made Flesh

by locketofyourhair, sinuous_curve



Series: A Concept By Which You Measure [7]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: BDSM, M/M, Scarring, Scars, discussions of self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-12
Updated: 2012-11-12
Packaged: 2017-11-18 11:28:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/560560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/locketofyourhair/pseuds/locketofyourhair, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/pseuds/sinuous_curve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But if he’s reading things right, taking into consideration the huge slice in Bruce’s arm and the mysterious acid burns, this might be exactly what they need.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Word Made Flesh

**Author's Note:**

> Nearly a direct sequel to [Reaching Out](http://archiveofourown.org/works/553331).
> 
> Discussions of self-harm. Contains a BDSM scene where the bottom has given away his safe-word.

He still can’t stop seeing the cut on Bruce’s arm when Bruce called him to the lab. They have an agreement. Bruce belongs to Clint inasmuch as Bruce gave the permission to hurt. Clint had the control, and if things go too far, Bruce isn’t alone in a room. He’s not bleeding out in his lab because he can’t stop thinking or hurting long enough to realize that taking a knife to one’s own skin has its drawbacks. 

The stress is understandable. Clint feels it every time he passes Steve’s sketchpad on the kitchen table. It’s still open from the morning of the attack. They had been waiting, killing time, and Cap was drawing Pepper’s profile. Her face is sketched and her smile is shaded, but the rest of the image was left behind when the alarm came. 

No one in the tower will close the sketchbook. It felt like accepting Steve’s death if they did it. Steve would have died if he was a regular human like Clint. But Steve wasn’t regular. He’s going to be fine.

So the sketchbook stays open.

Bruce has been scarce since he called Clint down to the lab. Two days later after it happens, Clint bumps into him ferreting food out of the kitchen, grabbing whatever he can carry down to his bedroom.

“Do you want some lunch?” Bruce asks, with a too cheery smile as he grabs another bag of chips. “I was just grabbing something. I’m in the middle of editing an article in my lab.”

There’s a finality to the way he says it, like he may not be telling the truth, but this is all he’s willing to say. Clint can try to press him, but outside of taking him to the room, Bruce won’t budge, and Clint shouldn’t bother pushing it

Clint should reach out and make sure there are no marks that aren’t Clint’s on Bruce’s skin. They’re alone in the Tower--Jane had an emergency and Natasha and Pepper won’t leave the hospital--and it feels like they’re loud in their efforts to avoid each other.

“No, I was just grabbing a bottle of water.” Clint grabs one out of the refrigerator and he pretends to be looking over Steve’s sketch again, like he’ll learn something new from it. Bruce doesn’t even try to be subtle when he flees from the kitchen and back to his bedroom.

It’s easier to pretend that nothing is shifting between them, and Bruce seems to be working under the same assumption. He grabs a bucket of soapy water and a garbage bag to go down to the room.

Clint washes the room down twice a month. Their arrangement leaves marks on the floor and debris that needs to be swept away. It’s soothing to do it, to gather up the ashes and to scrape some of the excess wax away. The point is never to clean the room, to get it back to the clinical perfection that Clint found it as all those months ago. There should be some sense of what happens here. There should be a weight to the space.

He knows interrogators who like their spaces to look like hospitals, like nothing much of anything happens when the lights go up. Clint has been in spaces that smell like bleach and disinfectant more than they smell like burning skin or blood. Those places always strike Clint as being disingenuous, plastic. He doesn’t fear them because anyone who enjoys a clinical space can’t really be enjoying the game. There must be something that they’re missing.

It’s not soothing today though. Steve is going to be discharged in a few days from the hospital, SHIELD insisting he needed more observation. Tony will be out maybe two days after that, maybe less. It’s going to be a few weeks of easy jobs for the Avengers, but aside from that no lasting damage. 

But that doesn’t make Clint feel better. His skin is too tight, rubbed raw, and he wants to do something with his hands that isn’t testing the ropes to make sure they are all strong still and throwing out anything that’s frayed. 

He checks the battery in the cattle prod, makes sure his knives as still as sharp as they were when he bought them. Clint likes knowing his tools are exactly as he needs them. He even checks the hook and its pulley to make sure that it is still holding, half pulling himself him on a length of rope and swinging. 

It’s a ritual. The floor gets mopped. Clint writes down anything he needs to buy at the hardware store next time he stops in. He checks the chair to make sure it doesn’t need to be replaced (as most chairs can only handle so much prop use before they start to get creaky and wobbling.) Clint likes the sound of things creaking, but he prefers knowing that the chair will remain stable for him.

Clint goes through the ritual twice, and he’s still unsettled. He tries not to think about his own needs in these things, how he needs to cause pain almost as much as Bruce needs to feel it. If they’re not doing enough for him to feel settled through it, he knows Bruce has to be worse. But he can’t think about it terms of what he needs. This is supposed to be about Bruce, partially to keep the Hulk at bay and partially because Bruce’s own tendencies could end up bringing the Hulk 

He’s still feeling his heart beat too fast in his chest, and the incessant knowing that this could be fixed easily. He has the training and the know-how to show Bruce that he never, ever has to go somewhere else for his little marks. He ignores the way something slithers in his lizard brain at the idea of showing Bruce how far he’s willing to go, how good it would feel to stop holding back because he can’t risk hurting Bruce permanently. (And to ignore that Bruce can heal most of the damage as the Hulk.)

He takes the mop bucket to the decontamination shower, dumping it out. Usually, there is something to divert his thoughts from the fantasy of just hurting Bruce until he decided it was over, not until Bruce wanted it to be over. They have safewords and signals, and Clint could ignore all of that, just take and take and take until his need to hurt was sated. 

But if he’s reading things right, taking into consideration the huge slice in Bruce’s arm and the mysterious acid burns, this might be exactly what they need. 

He sets down the bucket and goes for the elevator. He needs to talk to Bruce.

*

The lab looks stagnant. Clint knows enough about Bruce’s work patterns to know how to tell Bruce is working on something and when he’s not. Right now, he’s not working on a damned thing. He’s spinning his wheels over and over again. There is blood on some of the papers from the incident with the blade. That Bruce has just left them sit speaks more to his mindset than anything.

“Hey,” he says, and he settles himself on one of the counters. “How is your arm?”

“It’s fine,” Bruce says. He won’t look up from his computer screen. He’s typing a few words, deleting them, typing one or two more. His glasses are discarded on the table beside him. “I don’t think I need to get stitches. Yours are holding.”

Clint nods. He doesn’t like that the arm is going to probably scar. It grates on him. “How are you?” He watches Bruce’s wrist as he reaches for a folder, and there are three angry new splotches over Bruce’s skin. 

“Fine,” Bruce says again.

“Don’t lie to me.” He jumps down from the counter and comes to Bruce’s workspace, leaning against it. “I can see the new marks.”

“I’ll be fine.” Bruce amends his statement, rubbing his eyes. “It’s just been a week, but Pepper came down and said that Tony will be home with Steve. Everyone is going to be fine. It’s not that bad.” There’s something in his tone that makes the words into a mantra, like he’s been telling himself over and over again.

Clint frowns. “Tell me what you want, right now,” he says, an effortless command. 

Bruce licks his lip. “It’s not what I want. I want to finish this article, but I need...” He makes a vague motion with his hand. 

They’ve been in the room every other day, and Clint can still remember the feel of Bruce’s split skin under his fingers, through the gloves. “I don’t think that’s what you need right now,” he says carefully. 

Bruce looks at him then. “What do you mean?”

Clint has the strange impulse to touch Bruce’s hair, where the curls have gone a little wild in the past few days. “I think I know what will help.” He looks at the paper that are still stained with blood. “It’s going to be different.”

Bruce nods, and he puts on his glasses. “Different how?”

Clint tries to keep his stance casual. “I’m not going to give you a choice,” he says, and he lets his voice bleed empty. “I will tie you up and strip you down, and I will not stop until I’m done. I’ll do whatever I want, because I want it.”

There’s a moment where Bruce’s stillness makes Clint think he’s pushed him over the edge, into a place where Bruce can’t follow. It’s gone, though, and Bruce’s eyes go dark. He looks away, breathing out slow and measured. “Are you sure it will help?” he asks.

Clint smirks. He wasn’t sure before, but he is now. “I promise.”

Bruce nods then and he turn back to his computer. “Then I trust you.” He hits a few keys. “I’ll do it.”

Clint can’t stop himself from touching Bruce’s shoulder, making Bruce look at him. “Are you sure? You understand what I’m saying.”

Bruce nods. “You’re saying that you could kill me, and I couldn’t stop you.” He smiles a little, and Clint understands what Bruce is seeing in this. There are really only so many ways Clint can break Bruce; anything that will bring on the Hulk is out. Bruce can give up his no, but Clint can’t have full control. “And I’m telling you it’s okay.”

“Okay,” Clint echoes.

*

The room is already set for a new game, but Clint goes over it again. His brain is buzzing down deep at what he can do tonight, at what Bruce has agreed to. It’s not that he and Bruce adhere to some inherent safe and sane tenant of bondage and submission. Safe and sane aren’t really watchwords in Clint’s line of work, when most of his subjects aren’t coming out alive. Bruce likes it, and he’s a little less breakable than he presents.

After the room is ready and he’s spent three hours in the gym and range, he finds a guest room, something plain and almost pedestrian for all Tony’s love of extravagance. The blankets and sheets are luxurious and the carpet are a little too thick under his boots. But he stays in the room to get him into the mindset, like he would be on the mission. He's dressed the part, dark pants and steel toed boots and a black shirt. 

Clint forgoes the mask forgoing the mask. He normally would wear it, as he’s going to leave the subject alive, but this is also Bruce. He wants the ability to connect Bruce, to have Bruce see his face and know there’s no way out. Bruce agreed to it, but Clint knows that it is another thing actually see it. He wants that for Bruce. 

He sits on the bed and watches the clock. He almost wishes he had his bow at his side or a gun, something to let him fall deeper into the mindset, to think less about how this will be Bruce. Maybe next time.

At 1:10, he sits up a little straighter. “JARVIS, is Dr. Banner asleep?” 

There is a beat and then the AI replies, “Yes, Master Barton.”

Clint nods once, even though it’s a computer in the ceiling. It’s showtime then. 

Getting to Bruce’s room isn’t hard. Clint can be just about silent when he wants to be. He takes the stairs down to Bruce’s floor, because the elevators chime. He has the security codes into Bruce’s rooms, and he’s inside without making so much as a sound. 

Bruce likes ambient light, so there is little work at getting to Bruce’s bedroom. He’s never actually been in Bruce’s bedroom before, and part of him wants to stop, to investigate what Bruce would put into his own bedroom, but he can’t. He can feel the coldness sliding over him. He can tell from the way Bruce is twitching that he is actually asleep, dead to the world. 

Clint closes his eyes and tries to steady the anxiety that is trying to keep the coldness from taking root. He hopes that he’s made the right call, because if he shows this much of himself to Bruce and Bruce sees that he’s more of a monster than the Hulk can be, Clint doesn’t know what will happen. 

In the distance from the door to the bed, the anxiety disappears and training takes over. His hand fists into Bruce’s t-shirt and he knows what he’s doing. He has done this. 

Clint feel Bruce come awake about half a second before he hits the floor. There’s a muffled cry of “What--” and Clint slams his face down onto the carpet. He doesn’t stop moving because Bruce is surprised. That’s the idea. He needs to be off balance.

Bruce fights him from the moment he’s on the carpet. He fights hard, showing off the little training that Steve’s been able to train into him and what he’s learned on the run. It’s good, but Clint is better. 

“Stop,” Clint hisses and shoves his face down onto the carpet. He’ll gag Bruce and get his wrists tied here. 

Bruce stops fighting, and there’s a shift in the way he fights, like he’s more certain that he doesn’t need to throw Clint off because he knows what this is, what this is the start of. He starts shouting though, calling for help. 

They’re alone in the Tower. They both know it. JARVIS doesn’t respond.

Clint gets zip ties from his pocket and has Bruce’s wrists bound easily, using a knee on Bruce’s back to keep him pinned. With his hands neutralized, there’s room for more play in what he’s doing. 

He jerks back hard on Bruce’s hair. “Shut the fuck up, or I will cut your throat right here.” He feels Bruce’s entire body go still. Clint doesn’t make these sorts of threats. They both know what will happen if Clint tries to do something that drastic.

But every interrogator knows the importance of scary words. 

Clint uses Bruce’s stillness to gag him, a scrap of his towel in his mouth and then a piece of duct tape over Bruce’s mouth so he can’t spit it out. He has a hood, and it’s almost a shame to put it over Bruce’s face. He wants to see the look in Bruce’s eyes, but he can’t, not until they’re down in the room. 

Bruce is bound, gagged, and blind, and Clint doesn’t talk before he starts dragging Bruce across the floor on his knees. He doesn’t want Bruce to know what’s going on. Bruce struggles to get away, to get to his feet, anything, but Clint doesn’t care. Bruce isn’t so heavy that he can’t move him on his own. He’s never actually needed Bruce’s acquiescence to manhandle him. Clint’s had subjects taller and broader than Clint before. Bruce is nothing.

He shoves Bruce onto the floor of the elevator. Bruce tries to make a noise, but he’s gagged. Clint wants to mock him, but the silence is better. There’s a technique that police use, that suspects will speak to fill the quiet, and it works in Clint’s line of interrogation too, more in fact. Police officers can’t break bones.

When the elevator stops, Clint hauls Bruce up again. The hallway is cold tile, and Bruce’s feet slap uselessly against it. His voice comes again, muffled and slightly pleading, but Clint pretends he can’t here. Bruce gave up his no. There is nothing more that can be done than let Clint do his work.

He shoves Bruce down when they get to the room, onto the concrete floor, and Bruce is stunned into stillness. 

Clint gets the chains from his table, then hauls Bruce into a sitting position. Bruce’s hands have to be cut free to chain them, and Clint doesn’t want to talk yet. He wants to keep the eerie silence, because there’s an intensity between them that makes his skin feel like it’s vibrating. 

He ghosts the blade of his knife over Bruce’s neck, over the jumping artery in Bruce’s neck. The threat is implicit. 

Bruce doesn’t fight the chains when Clint has his wrists free, and then Clint has him up on the hook, stretched out in old plaid pants and a grey shirt in the corner. His fingers twitch and he’s completely helpless. Clint just watches, the way Bruce is balancing himself on the balls of his feet. He’s uncomfortable. 

The hood comes off then, and the gag. Bruce coughs at the dryness in his mouth, and Clint grins. He still doesn’t talk. Clint touches the blade to Bruce’s chest. He feels like he could hold it there for hours. Clint has let himself sink deep into the calm, controlled headspace he uses for real subjects. He knows _exactly_ what he’s doing. 

He holds it there until Bruce’s breathing shudders, and then he grabs the t-shirt up and away from Bruce’s body. He cuts it off, shredding it in his haste to get Bruce shirtless. The pajama pants follow, and Clint’s hand barely hesitates when he takes the blade to Bruce’s boxers, to leave Bruce completely naked and exposed. He can see everything Bruce has done to keep himself under control for the last week, the acid on his arms and the cuts and bruises. Clint is behind only a small handful of them, far too few. Something growls low in his chest.

Bruce’s eyes are impossibly wide. The nudity is new for them. Clint’s done some minor genital stuff, but everything was done through underwear. Clint just looks at Bruce, at his naked body. He doesn’t let his eyes linger on Bruce’s cock, though he has wondered. Bruce naked post-Hulking is always vulnerable and not even remotely sexual.

They both know Bruce gets off on pain. This can’t help but be a little sexual, and if it is, Clint is going to look. 

Clint turns back to the table, to his tools. There are places Clint hasn’t gone with Bruce, places that go beyond torture and getting the information you need and into something that is meant to be degrading. People talk more when they’re desperate to reclaim the worth that Clint has taken from them. Clint doesn’t usually go to those places with Bruce, because this isn’t about degrading.

Or it wasn’t. He picks up the cattle prod. He’s managed to turn it into something Bruce really does dread very beautifully. There are things on the table that could be used on Bruce to carry the sexual energy that seems to be all Clint can think about now, like now that he’s seen Bruce half-hard just from Clint throwing him around, he’s fixated. He has a cock ring and a flogger, but Bruce needs something with a bite to it.

Clint slides another knife into his back pocket and looks back at Bruce, at the marks on his skin. They’re glaringly obvious, and Clint hates it. Bruce shouldn’t be marking himself. Clint should. His fingers itch with the impulse to mark Bruce, to make a mark that will scar rather than fade.

He ignores the way scarring Bruce makes his cock kick a little. There’s a sudden pulse of _want_ that nearly blindsides him.

He slaps Bruce across the face, hard enough to make his hand ache. It brings his head back into the game, focused back on what they’re supposed to be doing here. This isn’t about sex, even if he’s brought a little bit of that into what they’re doing. This is about them getting settled and better. This is about Bruce remembering who is allowed to mark who. 

Bruce’s eyes drag back to Clint’s face, and Clint lets his face go could. “I’m going to hurt you, and there’s nothing you can do to stop that.” The script helps a little. It veers him back into that calm place. Bruce is Bruce, but he’s also just a body. He’s just something that can be hurt. 

Bruce makes a noise that is almost the beginning of a word, and Clint punches him in the stomach. He doesn’t telegraph the move, just down it. Bruce’s breath whuffs out of his chest. Clint fights not to smile. He has always liked that noise.

“I’m gonna hurt you,” Clint says again. He grips Bruce’s hair hard, pulling his head back. “Because I can. Because I want to. Because you can’t stop me.” Bruce shivers, but his eyes are deeply, solidly brown. There’s no green anywhere on his skin. “And I’m gonna hurt you because you need to be hurt.”

Bruce gives him a small, fractional nod. If it felt like permission, Clint might abort this thing where it is. It doesn’t though. It feels like acquiescence, and that is what Clint wants. He lives for that moment where they get that they don’t have a say here, that this is all about him. 

Clint steps back and without saying anything, without warning, shocks Bruce just below his belly button. 

Bruce’s knees come up and his shoulders jerk hard. The thing about this position is he can’t even press back against a chair for purchase. There’s something for him to hold onto except how he’s being hurt.

Clint shifts down a couple inches, right to where the trail of hair flares outward above his cock and shocks him again. Bruce actually cries out at that, loud enough that Clint hauls back and slaps him again.

“No one can hear you,” he says, voice flat. “You’re just making noise.”

Bruce’s breath is coming in short, shallow gasps. Clint digs his thumb into the mark left by the first shock, and those gasps become an actual sob. It’s an interesting reaction. Clint has never gotten Bruce this unraveled this fucking fast. 

He can see that Bruce is hard just from this, from being dragged out of bed and strung up. Clint crouches down, ignoring Bruce’s cock. He drags the tip of the prod down the soft, pale skin of the inside of Bruce’s leg. Clint’s never gone higher than where Bruce’s boxers would hit.

There’s a little freckle on Bruce’s right leg that Clint has never seen before. He shocks it.

Bruce’s knee comes up so violently he almost manages to knock Clint off balance. Clint shoves Bruce’s leg back down and looks at the mark over the freckle. It seems darker there than the other marks have been, the skin so thin and fragile.

“If you try that again, you will not get out of this room.” He looks up at Bruce’s face, to make sure Bruce understands. 

Bruce nods. 

Clint smiles and just holds the prod for a moment, close to Bruce’s skin. He knows the script and the pattern of what the prod is going to go next. He enjoys the look of horror that bleeds into someone’s eyes when they realize what he’s going to do, especially with men. They’re not used to their dicks being used against them.

Even Bruce gets that horrified look, a little softer around the edges than most subjects. But it’s there. Clint loves it.

“This is really going to hurt.” Clint doesn’t look away from Bruce’s face as he brings the prod up between Bruce’s legs, to Bruce’s balls, and shocks him. 

The sound Bruce makes is amazing. He sounds like his nerves are being flayed open. Clint watches it; he watches Bruce’s body jerk and twitch. There are tears running over Bruce’s cheeks, and Clint is almost positive that Bruce doesn’t realize he’s crying. 

Clint reaches down to rub his thumb over the mark, where Bruce’s skin is almost unnaturally hot to the touch. He digs his fingernail into it, and Bruce rewards him by making that lovely noise again. 

If this was an interrogation where Clint’s goal was information, he’d be drowning in it now.

His wrist brushes the shaft of Bruce’s cock when he pulls away, and he forces himself not to still, to take in the way Bruce hasn’t gone soft from even that much pain. He files it away. He’ll get distracted if he diverts from the task at hand.

Clint puts the prod down and pulls the knife from his back pocket. It’s larger than the one he used on Bruce’s clothes, with more of a curve to the tip. It looks scarier. If there is one thing Clint has learned, it’s that presentation is everything. He enjoys letting his subjects make something worse in their minds.

“I’m going cut you open now,” Clint says, testing the heft of the knife. He can feel Bruce’s gaze on him. “Because I get to do that, and you don’t.”

He gives Bruce a long look. He feels raw, like he’s the one strung up. He didn’t put most of these marks on Bruce. Bruce did it with his own hand, and he’s not allowed. That is Clint’s job. They had an agreement, an arrangement, and Clint knows that it was never so formal, but now? Clint wants it to be. Clint needs Bruce to understand. 

Clint goes back to Bruce with the knife held lightly in his hand. This is easy. He’s done this before. It’s easy to move close to Bruce and touch the cut on his bicep, all new and raw. He traces the tip of the knife against it. The fresh scab breaks open easily, and Clint digs his thumb into the cut where it looks deepest.

Bruce screams. It’s as deep as Clint remembers, barely healing beyond the scab. He’s distantly impressed that Bruce could do something like this with one hand. There are parts to Bruce that neither of them particularly like to discuss, and this is evidence of that. It is definitely impressive.

Clint is also certain Bruce will never do this again.

He waits until Bruce’s scream has choked off into softer sobs and says, “You’re still just making noise. Why did you do this?”

Clint knows; they talked about it. He needs to hear it again. 

Bruce shakes his head, and Clint digs his thumb back in, harder than before. “I will take you apart if I have to. You are going to answer me. Why.”

His head is tipped back when he says it. “I needed it.”

Clint is utterly calm. He shakes his head and uses his knife hand to force Bruce to look at him. “I didn’t need it. You needed me.”

Something flits across Bruce’s eyes, something deep and scared, and Clint hates at he’s almost afraid to chase it. But he will. 

Bruce closes his eyes and turns his face to the side. He makes a soft, distressed sound, and if not for Clint’s hand, he’d probably hang his head. Anything to avoid Clint’s gaze.

Clint takes a breath, but he’s so steady. “You know I’m right,” he says, his tone flat. “Say it.”

Bruce’s lips stay pressed together.

Clint touches the cut again, sliding his thumb over it. “Say it, and not because if you do, I’ll stop.” He lets his voice pitch low as he steps closer. Their bodies are touching. “Say it because if I do, I won’t.”

Bruce shudders. “I needed you,” he says, and it does sound like something inside him is shattering into little pieces. 

“Good,” Clint says as he takes a step back and presses the tip of the knife in his hand to the bottom of Bruce’s sternum. It’s sharp and cuts easy. He watches the trickle blood going down his stomach. 

“I’m going to scar you tonight,” Clint says. He watched the blood, the way it begins to wet the hair on Bruce’s stomach. “Because I can, and because I want to.”

He cuts Bruce again and again, listening to these soft, sobbing noises that Bruce keeps making. The cuts are contained to Bruce’s belly, because Clint knows Bruce is sensitive there, because there’s just a touch more flesh to work with. 

The cuts aren’t skin grazes. They’re deep, and Clint closes his eyes each time Bruce cries out. It’s harder and harder to push back that throbbing heat, the want deep inside him. He concentrates on watching the cuts open, the blood beginning to drip down Bruce’s legs and onto the floor. 

Except it barely makes it better. 

Clint presses his thumb into the cut he wants to stay, a deeper cut on the left side. Bruce doesn’t scar easy, but Clint has a deep and varied experience with how skin heals. He’ll do his best to make sure it lasts and scars ugly, thick, and permanent. 

Bruce screams again, and Clint watches the way he twitches when he comes down. 

Clint sets the knife down and releases the pulley, so Bruce falls into a heap on the floor. He cannot stand at the moment, and Clint always takes that as a sign of something well done, when Bruce is that emptied out. Clint tries not to notice that Bruce is still hard.

Aftercare, for them, is kind of awkward. Clint gets Bruce walking and to the emergency shower, and it’s cold. Clint tries not to acknowledge the way his stomach is clenching. The water is cold, and there’s really no way to get Bruce under it without getting Clint himself wet or getting blood on his clothes. 

Bruce is limp and boneless for a few minutes under the cold water, but he comes back to himself quickly. Clint can feel it, when his feet become less wandering and more stable. He leans into Clint until he can stand without wavering, and most of the blood is washed away by then.

They both have towels and clothes in the room, a dark shirt that will hide blood until they can get to a first aid kit. The best one is in the kitchen, and they’re alone. Clint doesn’t have to worry about Steve coming around the corner and seeing Bruce’s skin cut to ribbons. 

Bruce likes this part almost as much as the pain, Clint’s careful swipes of peroxide and neosporin before he puts the gauze on. They both know it’s true, and it’s just one of a million things that they aren’t going to discuss. 

He takes care of the cut on Bruce’s arm first, and then the other ones. He doesn’t want them to scar, especially the arm cut. The one cut he does want scarring, he’s less careful with, just slapping some gauze onto it. 

If worse comes to worse, he’ll keep cutting it open until it does scar.

Bruce makes a soft noise, and Clint looks up to his eyes. “I wasn’t kidding about your arm,” he says. His own voice is softer. “Don’t do it again.”

Bruce nods, licking his lips. “If I need it again, I should come find you.” He doesn’t make it a question, but Clint can read between the lines. He knows Bruce’s face now.

“You will come find me,” Clint corrects, pressing down on the gauze at Bruce’s stomach. “And if I’m not around, you will find a way to ask me first.

“Okay,” Bruce says, and it’s just that simple.

Clint has to look away from his eyes.


End file.
